University of Zakho

English Department

2023-2024

An article on:

Edmund Spenser

Prepared by:

Delveen H. Hameed

Supervised by:

Dr. Salih Abdullah

 Edmund Spenser was born in 1551 or 1552 in East Smithfield, London. There is
an ambiguity regarding the exact date of his birth since there are no exact
documentations to exist on that matter. However, the year of his birth can be
closely guessed in part due to Spenser’s own poetry. In his poem Amoretti, sonnet
60, he states that “Then al those fourty which my life out−went.” which means that
he is forty-one years old and the poem was published in 1594. Little is known
about him except that he was related to the noble family of Spencer but his
immediate family was poor. Of his parents the only fact known is that his mother’s
name was Elizabeth and his father was John Spenser, a journeyman cloth-maker.

He attended the Merchant Taylor’s school as a poor student. Although his school
only accepted the sons of rich and successful guild members, they reserved places
for boys whose families could not pay. At school, he received rich education in the
Latin and Greek classics, and was introduced to Virgil and Ovid. He was familiar
with the French and the Italian literatures as well. In 1569, he joined Pembroke
College, Cambridge University for his Bachelor of Arts. At Cambridge, too, he
was given admission as a “sizar” or poor scholar student who had to perform
menial duties. While at Cambridge, he came in term with Gabriel Harvey a learned
scholar on whose opinion and viewpoint he depended greatly despite their differing
views on poetry. In addition, he seems to have begun writing during his Cambridge
days, translating some sonnets and “visions” by Petrarch and the French poet Du
Bellay. He translated A theatre wherin be represented as wel the miseries &
calamities that follow the voluptuous worldlings, a collection of epigrams from
Petrarch and sonnets by Joachim Du Bellay and van der Noot. It is worth
mentioning that Spenser took his BA in 1573 and his MA in 1576.

After leaving Cambridge, he took a series of positions in the service of prominent

English noblemen, including the Earl of Leicester, who was a favorite of Queen
Elizabeth. While serving the Earl of Leicester, Spenser came to be friends with Sir
Philip Sidney, and during the late 1570s they often met to discuss literature and to
read each other’s poetry. In 1579, he dedicated a series of pastoral poems called
The Shepherd’s Calendar to Sidney. These poems were arranged according to the
months of the year. After the publication of this major work, he went to Ireland as
an assistant to Lord of Grey of Wilton, who was Lord Deputy of Ireland. He lived
there for the rest of his life, carrying out his administrative duties and working on
the ground poetic projects he had laid out for himself. In 1584, he became deputy
to the clerk of the Council of Munster in Ireland. This enabled Spenser to improve
his circumstances considerably and in1588 he acquired the possession of an estate,
the estate of Kilcolman, which was earlier in the hands of the rebellious Irish Earl
of Desmond.

Spenser from then until his death only returned to London three times. His first
visit, in 1589, was inspired by Sir Walter Raleigh, who visited Spenser in Ireland
and encouraged him to go to London and publish the completed portions of a vast
epic poem he was writing called The Faerie Queene. Likewise, there is a story
commonly told and believed that that Spencer presenting his poems to queen
Elizabeth, she was highly affected and commanded the lord Cecil, her treasurer, to
give him an hundred pound. The treasurer, however, objected that the sum was too
much. She said, "Then give him what is reason". Without receiving his payment in
due time, Spenser gave the Queen this quatrain on one of her progresses:

I was promis'd on a time,

To have a reason for my rhyme:
From that time unto this season,
I receiv'd nor rhyme nor reason.

She immediately ordered to reward him an annual pension of fifty pounds in

1591, but nothing more substantial was offered. Spenser was not on good terms
with the Queens’s chief minister Lord Burghley, Cecil, owing to latter’s allegiance
with the rival faction. He thus could not get any more favor from the Queen’s
court. Spenser’s hostility towards the peer in his Mother Hubbard’s Tale is viewed
as a clear reference of his antagonism towards Lord Burghley.

Moreover, Spenser celebrates his love for Elizabeth Boyle in Amoretti and his
marriage to her in Epithalamion; the two were published together in 1595. This
was his second marriage. Spenser had been married earlier toone Machabyas
Chylde in 1579. He came to England again in 1596 and during this period
published the last three books of The Faerie Queene. In 1598, his fortunes reversed
as Irish rebels attacked and took in possession his castle of Kilcolman. He came
back to England and died in 1599. He was buried near Chaucer, his great medieval
forerunner, in Westminster Abbey.
 Two of his works will be looked at in this paper. Amoretti and The Faerie Queen.
First, the paper will begin by Amoretti, a sonnet cycle that describes Spenser’s
courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Boyle. Amoretti was published in 1595 and it
included 89 sonnets and a series of short poems called Anacreontics and
Epithalamion. The term “amoretti” is literally defined as “little loves” or “little
cupids.” Edmund Spenser’s sonnets follow the Spenserian sonnet form, which is a
slight variation of the English (Shakespearean) sonnet. The rhyme scheme for
these poems is abab bcbc cdcd ee. From Amoretti sonnet 75 is chosen to be
highlighted here:

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I write it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize,

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eek my name be wiped out likewise.

Not so, (quod I) let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse, your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name.

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Sonnet 75 is about a man who keeps writing his lover’s name in the sand on a
beach, and gets frustrated when they get washed away. She reminds him that he is
being silly because she is going to be washed away with her name in the sand
when she dies one day. He replies by telling her that and their love will live forever
through his poetry.

Spenser's masterpiece is the epic poem The Faerie Queene. The first three books of
The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and the second set of three books was
published in 1596. Spenser originally indicated that he intended the poem to
consist of twelve books, so the version of the poem we have today is incomplete.
Despite this, it remains one of the longest poems in the English language. It is an
allegorical work, and can be read (as Spenser presumably intended) on several
levels of allegory, including as praise of Queen Elizabeth I. In a letter addressed to
his neighbor Sir Walter Ralegh, Spenser sets out to explain the “general intention
and meaning” of his richly elaborated epic. It is “a historical fiction,” written to
glorify Queen Elizabeth and “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous
and gentle discipline.” In pursuing this latter aim, the poet explains that he has
followed the example of the greatest epic writers of the ancient and the modern
worlds: Homer and Virgil.

The well-known stanza (41) from Canto I, Book I which describes the House of
Morpheus (sleep) is highlighted here:

And more, to lulle him in his slumber soft,

A trickling streame from high rocke tumbling downe

And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne

Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne:

No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,

As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,

Might there be heard: but carelesse Quiet lyes,

Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes.

Book I, dedicated to the virtue of holiness, follows the adventure of the Redcross
Knight, who represents the virtue of holiness. He encounters the deceptive Duessa,
Archimago, and the House of Pride. The virginal Una, who represents Truth,
initially aids the Redcross Knight in his journey; however, after his encounter with
the monstrous Errour and her cannibalistic offspring, the Redcross Knight wanders
away from his guiding light and proceeds into an illicit relationship with the
deceptive Duessa, whose very name means 'duplicity'.

The Redcross Knight only learns the virtue of holiness after his fall from grace.
Duessa leads him into the House of Pride, where the Knight meets Lucifera, the
female representation of Satan, and her court of sin: Idleness followed by Gluttony,
Lechery, Avarice, Envy, and Wrath. The Knight's ignorance causes him to
consummate with Duessa, leaving him too weak to fight the giant Ogoglio. When
Una and Prince Arthur come to rescue the Knight, Una reveals Duessa's true form
and redeems the Redcross Knight by taking him to the House of Holiness after his
triumphant battle over the monster Despair. With renewed strength, the Redcross
Knight defeats the dragon that held Una's parents imprisoned.
References:

https://livros01.livrosgratis.com.br/gu006937.pdf

http://public-library.uk/ebooks/33/3.pdf

http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/books/Ren03.pdf

https://jdolven.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/325/2015/08/2012-Spenser-
Edmund.pdf

https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/66098/1/Unit-3.pdf

https://www.adda247.com/teaching-jobs-exam/edmund-spenser-biography/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edmund-spenser